2  History and demography

Much of the debate over the significance of families to government policy involves some implicit assumptions about the role of families in the past. This section examines the role and structure of the family in an historical and anthropological context. It begins by sketching the history of the western European family over the last 500 years, in order to provide a backdrop to New Zealand’s European (predominantly British) roots. It then summarises key demographic changes to the New Zealand Maori and Pakeha[1] families during the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

2.1  The Western European family

2.1.1  Family complexity

The history of the Western European family shows the endurance of the nuclear family. In England in the early 1500s, the average household contained immediate parents and children and perhaps one or two servants. Families typically were not large, and did not contain ageing parents (Laslett 2000). Early mortality often relieved the necessity of supporting aging parents who supported themselves or relied on the parish for sustenance.

Laslett has suggested that the nuclear family is one of the most distinctive elements of Northern and Western European experience (Anderson 1995). His analysis of parish records found that the average household size was only 5, although there was a long distribution, and diversity between social strata (Laslett and Wall 1972). Work by Laslett and colleagues broke down the long-dominant assumptions that households were historically large, multi-generational and complex and that nuclear families were the historical consequence of the industrial revolution, urbanisation and modernisation of society. They had been there before the industrial revolution.

2.1.2  Marriage and fertility

The importance of independent nuclear families in Western Europe also drove marriage and fertility decisions. People would delay marriage until either they or their spouse (preferably both) had access to an independent income stream. For the lower classes this meant going into service and saving to afford their own piece of land or cottage industry. For the middle and upper classes this meant that economic factors had a significant effect on the choice of marriage partner. Marriage, after all, was the most important vehicle for the transfer of property. It was far more important than the purchase and sale of property on the open market (Stone 1990). It is not surprising that the choice of marriage partner was a topic that dominated early modern literature. For these reasons, from 1600 until the late 19^th century, Western Europe had an unusual marriage pattern in world history. Marriage was typically quite late (at age 28 for men, and 27 for women). A significant proportion of the population (between 10 and 20%) never married (Anderson 1995).

The rise of an urban industrial workforce increased the earnings potential of people from an earlier age, and created the possibility of marrying earlier, and having children at an earlier age. This had less effect on the number of children, and more effect on their distribution over the lifecycle. Families started to use early forms of contraception to limit child rearing into the early years of marriage. In the 18^th century the average woman lived for barely 20 years from conceiving her last child. By the 20^th century early fertility, family limitation and reduced mortality allowed women to live for 50 years following the birth of their last child. Average family size in England fell from five in the late 19^th century to about four in 1900 and three by 1910[JB1] (Anderson 1995).

2.1.3  Changing social attitudes towards the family

While the core structure of the family remained surprisingly stable for hundreds of years, the meaning of family underwent a massive transformation. There were dramatic changes in attitudes towards affection, privacy, and individual rights (particularly from kin group and community interference)(Anderson 1995). The notion of “family” only referring to the conjugal couple and their children became common only in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. Before these dates the “family” usually referred to the household (including servants) and the whole kinship group.

According to scholars such as Stone, marriage was seen as an economic and reproductive institution rather than an emotional relationship in the England of the 1500s. It was primarily viewed as a contract between two families and a means of protecting and transmitting property. The wishes of the couple were seen as less important than the needs of the family. From the 1600s society underwent a gradual change with affection and sex becoming more important dimensions of marriage. Marriage changed from being viewed as primarily formal and tied up with economic survival for the general population, or social advancement for the higher social groups (Anderson 1995). In the 16^th and 17^th centuries parents and kin could exert enormous pressure on a couple, especially in the highest circles of society where financial pressure could be brought to bear. By the 18^th century, mutual affection became more important.

In the 1500s and 1600s it was common for community and kin groups to interfere in the affairs of the nuclear family unit. For example, community pressure on the family unit culminated in public gatherings to expose “bad behavior” of errant spouses to public opprobrium. The trend towards individualism during the Enlightenment gave more weight to the individual rights and autonomy of the nuclear family unit. This picture is complicated by the fact that differences between socio-economic groups in the relative importance of mutual affection and more pecuniary motives for marriage, and in the extent of kin group interference continued throughout this period.

Perhaps the greatest social change in this period occurred in the position of women. Until the 19^th century, women had few legal rights. Family relationships were authoritarian and patriarchal. On marriage, all of the property, earnings and children of a woman passed into the absolute control of her husband. Under the law husbands could beat and abuse their wives with impunity. By the mid 19^th century, the move towards sexual equality began with the absolute authority of men being legally removed.

Over the last 500 years, social attitudes towards childhood have also changed. In medieval times, children were expected to take on adult responsibilities and there was very little concept of childhood as a separate phase in a person’s life. Childhood became increasingly separated from adulthood and from the 1700’s society began to believe that there were special obligations towards children including their rights to social protection. Gradually there evolved a modern concept of parenthood with its duties and obligations to the child (Anderson 1995).

From 1500 right until the late 19^th century, legal divorce was virtually impossible for all but the very rich. Divorce rates started to rise from 1860, moving in fits and start until the explosive growth of the last half of the 20^th century. Changing attitudes and behaviour were much more important than legal change in explaining trends in English divorce rates. Stone (1977) argued that a number of factors influenced the lack of divorce in the early modern period. The first involved internalised controls inculcated by religious values teaching women to obey their husbands and reinforced by external pressures from the community and kin against divorce. Marriages were an economic alliance between families and kin groups—building social, economic and political ties—that meant that kin had a vested interest in maintaining marriages. Thirdly, the Church could force couples to stay together. Finally, legal constraints made it virtually impossible to divorce, although there is little evidence that variations in the strictness of divorce laws influenced the degree of marital breakdown.

The decline in mortality probably played a role in increasing divorce rates after 1860, simply because it prolonged the duration of marriage. Although divorce was rare, remarriage was nevertheless common due to high mortality, particularly of women during childbirth. Reconstituted families were commonplace.

Changes in notions of marriage also affected attitudes towards marital dissolution. As romance and sexual attraction became more important over the centuries, these changes in the mode of spouse selection made it more likely that marriage partners would become disappointed and seek dissolution when their spouses did not live up to their romantic ideals. The increasingly individualistic emphasis in religious, philosophical and political thought resulted in changes to popular attitudes towards individual rights and roles. People began to demand the right to alter their destiny including the ability to separate from their spouses. It was only long after shifts in values and behaviour had taken place that the legislature slowly moved to alter the law.